MBC120719

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Was it worth seeding early?

Five inducted to Hall of Fame

Diagnostic school feature March-seeded canola » PG 29

July 19, 2012

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SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 70, No. 29

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$1.75

PG 17

manitobacooperator.ca

Ottawa seeks heavier trigger pull on AgriStability Report says margin trigger may rise from 15 to 30 per cent Staff

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roposed changes to the federal/provincial farm income s t a b i l i z a t i o n p ro g ra m b e yo n d t h i s ye a r a re expected to lead to tighter eligibility for a program payout, according to a producer group observing the planning process. In i t s Gra s s Ro u t e s newsletter, Alberta Beef Producers reported some suggestion among federal and provincial agriculture ministers that governments should “rebalance their books to increase producer responsibility for ‘normal risk.’” As commodity prices increase across many agriculture sectors the cost of business risk management (BRM) programming in Growing Forward, the federal/provincial farm policy funding framework that expires this year, is also increasing, ABP said. Increases in eligible net sales allow more producers to contribute more into the program and AgriStability reference

At Joseph Zuken Heritage Park in Winnipeg in 1987 the Lord Selkirk Association of Rupertsland dedicated this cairn and plaque to the earliest wheat planting of the Selkirk settlers.  photo: lorraine stevenson

Prairie agriculture about to turn 200 years old The Red River settlement was the beginning of one of the most important movements in Canadian history and the establishment of the farming system of the Prairie provinces By Lorraine Stevenson

See AGRISTABILITY on page 6 »

co-operator staff

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hey were poor, landless farmers going to an unimaginably remote land — and forever changing it. The Selkirk settlers’ arrival at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers 200 years ago this fall led to the opening of the Canadian West and the beginning of Prairie agriculture. L a t e r t h i s s u m m e r, Manitobans will celebrate Red River 200, the bicentenary of the arrival of Manitoba’s first immigrants, brought here from Scotland by Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk. The celebrations, organized by a bicentenary committee, include much pageantry and tributes, arrival ceremonies

and banquets — and a visit from the present-day Lord and Lady Selkirk on Sept. 5. Four groups arrived from 1812 to 1815 in what was then called Assiniboia, a vast tract of unbroken prairie five times the size of Scotland purchased by Selkirk from the Hudson’s Bay Company. This would be Selkirk’s most ambitious attempt to find a new home for some of the thousands of Scots expelled from their farms during the “Clearances.” The first group arrived late in the year but wasted no time in planting a crop — sowing a bushel and a half of wheat brought from Scotland on Oct. 7, 1812. It was a major historical event and not forgotten by those who proudly trace their lineage back to those early farmers.

Jim MacNair of Graysville, brother Neil, and sisters Isabel Rutter and Elsie Coates of Carman are some of them — direct descendants of Alexander and Christina Macbeth, who arrived in 1815. Their son Robert would eventually wed a woman named Mary, believed to have been the first child born among the Selkirk settlers, says Jim MacNair. “She was either born on the way over or just after arrival, possibly at Hudson Bay,” said MacNair.

Six generations of farmers

Little Mary was the first of many. No one knows precisely how many people are descendants of Selkirk settlers, but a few years ago it was estimated there are about 15,000

in Manitoba alone, says Bill Matheson, president of the Lord Selkirk Association of Rupertsland. “It could be double that,” said the Stonewall farmer, whose great-great-great-grandfather Alexander Matheson, arrived with his family and widowed mother in 1815. T h a t m a k e s B i l l ’s s o n Nick the sixth generation of Mathesons to farm land in the Stonewall area, which Matheson’s great-great-grandfather John “Bushie” Matheson and his son homesteaded in 1873. Bushie was the last surviving Selkirk settler when he passed away at age 84 in 1898. The Selkirk settlers left many legacies. They built schools and churches because they See SETTLERS on page 6 »

U . S . D R O U G H T :   L i t t l e re l i e f s e e n t h i s w e e k a n d n e x t   »

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